Imagine you have a safe at your house to keep your important documents protected.

Now imagine that the government requires you to register your safe because a child could be trapped in your safe.

Now imagine that the database was leaked.

Your important documents were safer because you had a safe, now they are less safe because thieves know exactly what houses have home safes and thus where they should go to steal from.

I'm pretty sure "important documents" in the average person's home safe have very little value to thieves.

replace "important documents" with "fat stack of cash"

Suppose he's talking about real safes, security safes. Not fire safes.

And suppose this conversation is about real guns. Not nerf guns.

what is a random thief gonna do, wipe his ass with my birth certificate? Do people without a safe have no birth certificates?

No.

My anonymous gun ownership make me and my neighbors safer because I:

1. Can protect myself and my family.

2. Gun seeking criminals (e.g. Mexican drug cartels) that are better armed for the occasion do not know to target my house for my rifles, shotgun and handgun.

3. Burgling my very (yet cool) progressive neighbors is risky since every other house in America has a gun (I found a corner of swing state America that looks down on lawn signs). Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime.

> Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime

Be useful to post evidence of this claim.

im not stating a statistical fact. All Im saying is, all else being equal, there is an extra nevative term in the expected value equation that goes boom and has a P ~ 0.5

"Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime." That's a serious claim.

USA is first by incarceration rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera... even with 120 arms every 100 persons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

South states (where AFAIK at least looking at international news, people is more willing to own a gun) have incarceration rate really high: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra... Probably there's a problem with illegal immigration, that doesn't explain everything, overall is incredibly higher than other western countries.

This is quite old https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9715182/ "Conclusions: Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.

Also: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/sites/default/files/2014-... Almost all KPI but Defensive Use are increasing since 2014. Of course it's only correlation with number of arms, much higher in USA than most other countries.

But, there's a 2013 CDC study https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-... that says * "that guns are an effective and often used crime deterrent and that most firearm incidents are not fatal" * "stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals."

Or another one https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm: that says "In summary, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."

Or from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_... it's not clear if concealed arm licenses had impact on crime, in any way.

Also, you must really be willing to use a gun. Uvalde police waited 45 minutes before going in, protocol says to go in as soon as possible, they were scared. They are humans afterall, even if trained.

So, it's not really clear to me that more arms means more or less safety. But I know this: in 2020 Chicago alone (where AFAIK there are what you could call "strict laws") there have been almost 3 times murders than whole Italy. Rate is about 60 times, and Chicago is not even in top 10 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...). Something to think about.

TL/DR but I'm sure its all very interesting

However, I didn't state a statistical fact, or assert the effect of guns on the amount of criminality.

"Widespread gun ownership significantly lowers the EV of committing crime."

EV is expected value, not expectation. That is, I didn't say that crime is less likely. I said that a person who comes into a house in the US has a not insignificant chance of leaving on a stretcher, which I consider negative value from the invader's PoV.

I'm not sure. Less than half US households have at least a gun, considering 120 arms every 100 people, there's quite a concentration. Also, commonsense tell me that, if armed, criminal comes in already branding the gun, to react quickly people inside should always have a gun with them, even when inside home. I don't know if US people is used to, I would find it a terrible way of living, a way of fear.

As all statistical evidence indicates, your family is far more likely to be killed by your gun than by any other. Your gun ownership endangers your family.

Like everything in stats you have a conditional probability given that I, like most gun owners, am a responsible gun owner.

I have a safe, trigger locks, don't have a history of violence, etc. The small minority who are irresponsible gun owners get slaughtered increasing the numbers for the larger pool.

That partition function in the denominator is key!

So, no. My gun does not endanger my family.

Sure but that's always been the case. People with guns at home shoot themselves, their spouses, or are shot with their own gun by burglars, at a rate obviously greater than that of people without guns at home. People with guns at home kill themselves at triple the rate of normal people.

CDC report under Obama demonstrated those with guns at home have much less physical injury during home invasion than those without guns.

>People with guns at home kill themselves at triple the rate of normal people.

Those studies are widely known to have serious statistical problems since those with suicidal tendencies also may purchase a gun, completely breaking the independent variable requirement to make such a claim. [1] for example at least addresses that these are real issues.

Also, Japan's suicide rate, without guns, is larger than the US suicide and homicide rates combined.

I think you're pushing as true things that are not demonstrated, and may well be untrue.

[1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/fir...

You've chosen to focus on suicide in the GP's post, and are phrasing your post:

> I think you're pushing as true things that are not demonstrated, and may well be untrue.

As if this refutes their entire thesis, which it does not. Can you provide some sources on your non-suicide gun violence assertions?

got a link to that cdc report?

> Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18319.

It's important to remember, in the context of this obviously intentionally vague language, that until 2018 the CDC was explicitly prohibited from conducting research into the statistics of gun violence by the Dickey Amendment, and has only published cursory data in the few years since that research ban was abolished. But -- that language still remains in legislative force: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/03/22/...

> Language in the report accompanying the bill clarifying that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can, in fact, conduct research into gun violence. A long-standing rider known as the Dickey Amendment, which states that no CDC funds “may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” has been interpreted in the past to bar such research. The amendment itself remains.

>For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use

This study is quote controversial, not reproducible, and Kellerman would never release his dataset for others to check. This lack of credible scientific behavior is what led to the Dickey Amendment. The summary in the 2013 report is being quite kind to Kellerman (who was on the report committee - knowing his research and history I suspect he was livid about this conclusion dismissing his most famous work).

>that until 2018 the CDC was explicitly prohibited from conducting research into the statistics

This is false, which is why Obama called them on it and had them do a study, even though no law was changed. Also during the years 1999-2018 there are CDC sponsored studies on gun violence, which show up on their site and can be found via Google scholar.

The CDC self-imposed the ban. Even after the above, CDC still self-banned https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2015/01/14/...

Also there are many other national and private sources of funding to do the same research, from NIH (with 10x the budget of the CDC), to Bureau of Prisons to DoJ funding, to many private foundations.

Huh! I would seem like with the rest of the thoroughness of your post, you would cite some of these other studies. Ah, well, nevertheless.

“Normal people”? Your bias is showing. 42% of US households have at least one gun.

25 percent of California adults live in households with firearms.

Women have abortions at a much higher rate than men. That is the logic you just used.

You're being downvoted (or were when I commented) but that last part is absolutely what the data say, and I've seen data that say the rates are much higher than triple vs non-gun owners. Lots of suicides are in the heat of the moment and when there isn't an easy, painless way to kill yourself, you don't (e.g. if you take a lot of pills, you have a window where you can realize you don't want to die and call 911). Of course there will be people who plan it out and go through with it in other ways.